New bootcamp and parallels install

[KDR]

I have decided to give bootcamp and parallels a shot on my MBP to see if I can either get rid of my old PCs at home and possibly use my MBP for work.

I would like to be able to run bootcamp to launch in Windows-only mode for work, but also run parallels for those times when I am not working and running OSX but need to run something in Windows without rebooting.

I have zero experience with this. I assume I set up bootcamp and install Windows first. Once that's running can I then install Parallels and tell it to use that partition?

Lastly, any suggestions for how much space to allocate to the bootcamp partition? My HD is 500GB and I don't store much on it. Most of my files are on my iMac. I will mainly run Office programs and Quickbooks in Windows. Is RAM allocation an option within Parallels? In this something I can change on the fly or something that is fixed with the initial setup? I will be upgrading to 8gb.

 

[CorporateFelon]

I have decided to give bootcamp and parallels a shot on my MBP to see if I can either get rid of my old PCs at home and possibly use my MBP for work.

I would like to be able to run bootcamp to launch in Windows-only mode for work, but also run parallels for those times when I am not working and running OSX but need to run something in Windows without rebooting.

I have zero experience with this. I assume I set up bootcamp and install Windows first. Once that's running can I then install Parallels and tell it to use that partition?

Lastly, any suggestions for how much space to allocate to the bootcamp partition? My HD is 500GB and I don't store much on it. Most of my files are on my iMac. I will mainly run Office programs and Quickbooks in Windows. Is RAM allocation an option within Parallels? In this something I can change on the fly or something that is fixed with the initial setup? I will be upgrading to 8gb.

Yes Setup up Boot Camp and Install windows, and then you can set up Parallels to point to the boot camp partition. I did 75Gigs for my partition. It sounds like you can get away with a smaller partition. I wouldn't go below 32gb.

Also yes, in parallels you can adjust how much ram is allocated after the fact. However, you can only adjust it when the virtual machine is turned off. You can't adjust it while it is running.